The Laws of Chemistry
by lafiametta
Summary: Sasil AU. She was a popular girl, a cheerleader, living a seemingly charmed life. He was a weirdo skater, always on the outside looking in. On the surface, they were the unlikeliest of lab partners, with nothing in common, but as summer gave way to fall, they would soon discover that they shared more secrets than they could have ever really imagined.
1. Chapter 1

This story started off as a photoset on Tumblr, and then transformed into a one-shot ficlet, and now is apparently a multi-chapter fic! So if you read the ficlets (A Beautiful Thing), you'll recognize the first chapter (there, it's Chapter 20: "A Different Person"), but the rest is original to this story. Enjoy!

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Sally Ann stepped cautiously through the doorway of her chemistry classroom. It was the first day of school and everything smelled scrubbed and clean, the halls and the floors holding the faint whiff of industrial cleaner. Everyone's clothes even smelled new, like they had just come from the store, or at least washed with a little too much detergent.

She spotted an open desk next to two of her friends from the cheerleading squad and quickly made her way over. Like Sally Ann, they were all wearing their cheer uniforms; their coach, Miss Grimes, had instructed all the girls to wear them as a show of school spirit on the first day, and every single one of them knew that disregarding Miss Grimes' instructions was a sure-fire ticket back down to the JV squad.

"I didn't know you were in this class," said Gwen, turning around in her seat towards Sally Ann, her red-gold curls shining in the light from the nearby windows.

"I switched Spanish classes," Sally Ann replied, opening up her backpack and pulling out a brand new notebook. "I told them about Señor Osborn and how he kept looking at me weird all last spring."

"Ew, gross," offered Sharon, sitting in the next row.

"Yeah, I know," said Sally Ann, shrugging her shoulders casually. "So..."

She let her voice trail off, hoping the conversation would stop there. While it was true that she had caught Señor Osborn staring at her on a number of occasions last year – mostly on days she had been wearing her cheer uniform – that hadn't been the real reason she had wanted to change her schedule. With different class times, she now had the last period of the day free, which allowed her to sign out early from school on the days when she worked the afternoon shift at her part-time job.

Nobody at school knew about the job – and she planned on keeping it that way. Her popularity, as shaky as it was, would take a direct hit if people found out she was working the register at a big box store two towns over. And it was embarrassing, the fact that she and her brother could barely pay their rent, now that his hours at the plant had been cut back. The girls on the squad – even her friends like Gwen and Sharon – they wouldn't understand, not with their nice houses and designer jeans, with the cars their parents bought them for their sixteenth birthdays. It was hard enough not really feeling like one of them; she wasn't about to advertise the depressing realities of her life.

The bell rang and room quieted a little as the teacher came up to the front of the room and began to take attendance. Sally Ann could hear Gwen and Sharon whispering across the row; rather than trying to listen in, she opened up her notebook and started doodling her name, surrounding it with spirals and tiny flowers.

"Sally Ann Evans?"

"Here," she said loudly, not looking up from her notebook.

"Hasil Farrell?"

Sally Ann's head quickly swiveled up and around, as a mumbled "Yeah" eventually emerged from the back corner of the room. She couldn't see him exactly, not with the people blocking her view, but it probably wouldn't have mattered, considering the dark hoodie that he had pulled up onto his head.

From where she was, she could see that he looked a little bigger than he had the last time they had been in a class together, English during freshman year. Back then, he had been small, almost scrawny, sitting behind her as his name followed alphabetically, never saying a word in class or opening a book, making her wonder if he had been able to make it all the way to 9th grade without actually knowing how to read. The only other thing she remembered – aside from his silence – were his eyes, so clear and blue-gray, long dark lashes fanning up towards serious brows. She had only glanced at them on occasion, when she turned in her seat to pass back some handouts, and once when he handed her a pen she had accidentally dropped on the floor, but she had been surprised at how strangely sad they looked, somehow gentle and intently focused at all once. And each time – even more of a surprise – she had caught him staring right back at her.

"Oh, god, Hasil's in this class?" Gwen whispered back at Sally Ann while she quickly scanned the rest of the room. "At least he didn't bring any of his weirdo friends with him."

Their school wasn't that big, and the cliques were pretty well-known: Hasil hung out with the freaks and the skaters who wore overly baggy clothing and spent their time outside of class standing around and smoking while they watched each other practice skate tricks against the concrete edges of the parking lot. That being said, "hung out" was a pretty loose term. He didn't seem to have that many friends, although she knew he had family, a few cousins of unknown quantity whose academic progress appeared to be as spotty as their school attendance. What was even weirder was that they all seemed to live together – aunts, uncles, cousins, everyone – in some ramshackle place on a back road off the highway. She had heard rumors that all they did there was make meth, but she wasn't sure she believed it.

Sally Ann's attention focused back on the front of the room as the teacher, Mr. Houghton, began to talk about the class. It all seemed pretty straightforward, until he explained that they would be assigned lab partners – that they would have for the _entire_ year – and that they would start their first lab today. She looked around, hoping that at least she would be paired with someone halfway normal – maybe even one of her friends, if she was lucky – and then her heart sank as she heard the instructions that Mr. Houghton began to give.

"Okay, folks, we're doing this alphabetically, so Aaronson and Adams over at that first table…" – he pointed to the lab table closest to the door – "…and then Atkinson and Caramazza, Diaz-Heaney and Doyle, Evans and Farrell…"

At that point, Sally Ann stopped listening, simply letting her eyes close in resignation as she let out a tiny sigh.

"Oh, that sucks," Sharon mumbled. "Sorry…"

"Yeah," said Sally Ann, opening her eyes to see her two friends staring sympathetically back at her. "Well, just my luck, huh?"

"Don't let him say any weird things to you, or breathe on you weird," added Gwen. "You should totally tell if he does, though. Maybe you can get him suspended, or like expelled or something…"

"Uh, okay," said Sally Ann, as she gathered up her pen and notebook. Now that the lab partners had been assigned, Mr. Houghton was explaining, they were supposed to start work at their tables. She gave her friends one final grimace before making her way over to her assigned table, where printed instructions and glassware had already been left for the two of them.

Sally Ann picked up the instructions, trying her best to study them intently even as she was half-watching the figure emerge from the last row of desks and walk towards where she was standing. As he came closer, finally stopping right next to her, she was shocked at how tall he had gotten. He towered almost a head over her, and had filled out in other areas as well, clearly visible even underneath his over-sized clothes. He had pushed the hoodie off his head, but he was wearing a knit gray hat that covered almost all of his light brown hair, although a few curls edged their way over the tops of his ears and down the back of his neck.

He was looking at her again, in that way she remembered, and she found herself feeling incredibly self-conscious, her cheer uniform now far too small and short for her liking, her arms and legs too bare. She quickly brushed her hair so it fell over her shoulder, letting it cover that bit of skin that was the closest to him.

"So, uh, should we get started?" she asked, trying to keep her voice normal and calm – and not in the least bit shaky – as she stared back at the paper in her hands.

He didn't say anything, but she saw him nod out of the corner of her eye. Shifting his weight a little, he put both of his hands up against the edge of the table, and as she looked down she noticed that two of his fingers seemed to be missing.

"Oh my god, what happened to your hand?" she asked without thinking.

He lifted his left hand off the table and glanced at it for a moment; he was wearing fingerless leather gloves, but it was clear now that his last two fingers were completely gone.

"Just an accident," he said quietly, his gaze now catching hers.

"An accident?" she asked, raising her eyebrows in doubt.

"Yeah," he replied, and as he looked at her, Sally Ann found it harder and harder to glance away. There was something in his eyes, a mystery she found herself wanting to solve, something odd and curious and strangely different. Because he was looking at her – and while she was more than used to boys looking at her, eyeing her up-and-down hungrily with acquisitiveness in their gaze, standing next to Hasil, it felt like he was actually seeing _her_ somehow, seeing all her doubts and fears and secrets, baring them more easily than the skin she had half-displayed to the world. But that couldn't be real, could it? She didn't know him, and he certainly didn't even know her. They were too different to be anything more than strangers.

There was no reason that her heart should be beating as fast as it was, an insistent rhythm that she found oddly difficult to ignore.

"Um… okay, then," she said, finally wresting her gaze away. It was only then that she thought to wonder what kind of accident would cause someone to lose two fingers.

She turned her attention back to the instructions, hoping that by focusing on the lab she could set aside all of the strange feelings that Hasil Farrell seemed to be stirring up in her just by his mere proximity. They began to follow the steps laid out for them, Sally Ann reading everything aloud in her clearest voice and Hasil working with the lab equipment after listening to her directions. As he finished each step, she also set herself the task of recording all their results, printing the data neatly on the sheet.

Mostly, they were quiet as they worked, Sally Ann taking quick moments to look as he precisely watched the measurements and used the weighted scale to balance out their liquid-filled beaker.

"You're really good at this," she eventually said in partial surprise. "You practice your chemistry at home or something?"

She realized what she had said – or at least what she had implied – a half-second too late, because he looked back at her, a look of dismay suddenly clouding over his face.

"Oh, I'm _so_ sorry," she said quickly. "I didn't… well, it's just…"

Sally Ann didn't know quite what else to say. It was difficult to apologize for unintentionally implying that his family made meth without actually acknowledging the rumor itself.

"'s okay," he murmured, turning his face back towards the lab equipment on the table.

"No, it's not," she said insistently. "I'm really sorry. I didn't mean anything by it, I promise." He glanced back at her again and she decided to take her chances and offer him a smile, nothing too big, but enough to let him know she was being genuine. "I swear from this point forward, I'll only make jokes about you being bad at chemistry."

"Okay," he said, nodding a little, and Sally Ann could have sworn that she saw the corner of his mouth tick up slightly before he turned his attention back to their work.

Before long, they had finished all their steps and tabulated the results, Sally Ann writing out their final conclusions in the final space at the bottom of the sheet. She hadn't even realized how quickly the time had passed until she heard the bell ring, sharply bringing her out of the quiet camaraderie she had been sharing with him.

Before she took their completed results up to the teacher's desk, though, she caught his eye.

"So… I'll see you tomorrow, Hasil," she said, offering him one last smile. She could feel warmth course up through her chest and across her face, catching along the roundness of her cheeks.

"See you tomorrow... Sally Ann," he replied, his blue-gray eyes trained intently on hers, his lips slowly curling into a boyish smile that she realized was meant for her and her alone. And then he turned, making his way towards the door – he hadn't brought anything to class, she realized, not even a pencil – and she could only stand there, trying to make sense of what had just happened.

Eventually, she would need to grab her things and make her way to her next class, and after that was over, she would change and go to cheer practice and she would be with her friends and it would be as if the last hour never even happened. But she would know. She would remember how he looked at her and how he said her name. She would remember what he looked like when he smiled at her, his face lit up as if he was a different person – a person, she now sensed, maybe only she knew.


	2. Chapter 2

"So…?" asked Gwen as Sally Ann reached down to grab her backpack from where it sat on the floor. A boisterous tangle of voices emerged around her as everyone began to make their way past the rows of desks and out the door of the chemistry classroom.

"So what?" Sally Ann replied, not meeting her friend's gaze as she pulled her backpack onto her shoulders.

"What'd he say to you? I saw the two of you talking."

"Nothing," Sally Ann said quickly. "I mean, it was just about the lab."

Of course, that wasn't really true, but she didn't really want to tell Gwen about everything else, about her discovery of Hasil's missing fingers, about the stupid way she had insulted him and her lame apology. She didn't want to tell Gwen about how surprisingly sweet he had been – quiet and strange, but sweet nevertheless. And she definitely didn't want to tell her about the way he had gently smiled back at her, and how her stomach had looped itself into a tight, tingly knot in response. Gwen wouldn't understand any of that; it would just make her think of him as more of a freak and a weirdo, and she would probably think that there was something wrong with Sally Ann if she didn't see him exactly the same way.

"Yeah, well…" offered Gwen, as they began to walk together towards the door. "He better not try anything, is all I'm saying."

"Yeah," Sally Ann said quietly.

"Whatever," Gwen said, looking out into the busy hallway. "I gotta get to my locker before French. See you at practice?"

"Yeah, okay," replied Sally Ann, nodding. "See ya."

The rest of the afternoon passed in a rush as Sally Ann sat through her American history class and then, for the last period, retreated to the library. She had already been assigned homework for a few of her classes, so she drew up a schedule for the week to make sure that she could get everything done, taking into account the constraints of cheer practice and her job. It wouldn't be easy, she saw, but it was doable. She would just need to stay focused, and keep sight of her goal: good grades, good test scores, and then hopefully some decent scholarships so that she could afford the tuition at the state university.

She glanced up at the top of the page in her notebook where she had been laying out her schedule: there was her name, written in blue pen ink, surrounded by curlicues and tiny daisies, left just as it had been when she drew it at the beginning of chemistry class. She had been drawing it just she had heard her name being called, stopping just as she had heard his name follow right after.

For a moment, she let her mind empty itself of its worries and concerns and started to doodle again, her pen moving unconsciously across the lines of the paper. She must have been paying less attention than she had thought, because after a little while, she looked down in shocked realization to see that she had drawn his name below hers, the tops of the first and last letters edging up into the decorative border of flowers.

Sally Ann looked around quickly to see if anyone had seen what she had done, but the tables were mostly empty, with no one in her immediate vicinity. Still, she wasn't taking any chances. With a quick rip, she tore the corner of the page off and crumpled it into a tiny ball. What the hell did she think she was doing, she thought to herself, drawing something like that? What was wrong with her?

She let out a short sigh of frustration and threw the crumpled paper into the nearest trash can. It was only then that she was able to turn her attention back to the schedule she had made, trying her best to focus on what she needed to get done after she got home from practice.

Once the bell had rung, she packed up her bag and made her way down to the gym. By the time she got to the locker room, at least half of the squad was already there, changing into their practice gear. Sally Ann joined in the group, chatting casually about the first day of school and how everyone's classes had gone. No one asked her about what had happened in chemistry class – not even Sharon, who was just a few lockers down – and Sally Ann was glad that the minor drama brought about by her socially undesirable lab partner had apparently come to an end.

Even Gwen, once she finally arrived, seemed to have forgotten all about it, her mood buoyed by the fact that the senior captain of the soccer team had texted her and asked her to come over to his house once practice was over. His parents wouldn't be home until late, Gwen said in an excited half-whisper, and his college-age brother had hooked him up with some bottles of Stoli before he had driven back to school.

"Stay safe," Sally Ann teased her friend. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

"Yeah, but that's 'cause you don't do anything," Gwen said playfully. "Seriously, when was the last time you hooked up with anybody?"

"I can't help it if I'm picky," said Sally Ann, "and that most of the guys at this school are completely gross."

That was a good enough excuse, even if it wasn't much of a real explanation. Sally Ann had some experience with guys at least, enough that she was no longer considered by her friends to be a total prude. She had only ever been with one guy, a football player, who she had started occasionally hooking up with last spring. Sleeping with him had been okay – nothing horrible, but nothing that special either – and for the most part, she didn't really think about it much. She didn't have all that much interest in doing it again, though, and it didn't help that her brother was overprotective – to say the least – and had essentially forbidden her from going out with anyone.

"So are we going to hang out this weekend or what?" asked Gwen, switching the subject. "You should come over on Saturday. We can finish watching _Grey's_."

"I can't on Saturday," said Sally Ann.

That was true, at least. But she couldn't tell Gwen the real reason she couldn't come over: she was scheduled to be at work most of the day. She stammered for a moment, caught on what excuse to give.

"Um, I'm… I'm doing something at home with my brother. It sounded like it might take a while… I can let you know, though, if I'm done early," she added. That wouldn't happen, of course, but it might make her story more believable.

"What'd he want you to do?"

"I don't know… He didn't say."

"You know, at some point you need to tell your brother to stop being such a dick," Gwen said. "He's kept you busy all summer. We've barely done anything together the whole time."

"Yeah, _that'll_ go over well," Sally Ann scoffed. She sighed, her voice softening. "But, yeah, I know… It's just, well you know how he gets… But look, now that school's started, we can hang out during practice, and we'll see each other in class–"

"Assuming you don't get abducted and cut into little pieces by your lab partner…"

"Ew!" said Sally Ann, laughing. "Seriously, thanks for that image…"

They were still giggling as they made their way into the gym and gathered with the rest of the squad to start the warm up.

Unlike her chemistry class, practice held few surprises: they warmed up and stretched, and then Miss Grimes put them into small groups to work on their cheers and their tumbling. After a short break, the whole squad got back together to practice the half-time routine they would perform at Friday's game.

Sally Ann loved cheering. There was just something about it, the movement and the energy, the idea of being part of this larger thing that worked in such like-minded synchrony. Every tumbling move, every jump, they were like little puzzle pieces that fit seamlessly into the whole. Most of all, she loved getting lost in it, letting go of everything in her mind except the next move. And that feeling – of the whole squad moving as one and completely nailing a routine – it was pretty impossible to beat.

They must not have been nailing it this afternoon, however, not from the way Miss Grimes was walking around and watching them as they worked through their half-time presentation. From the corner of her eye, Sally Ann could see her narrowed brows and pinched expression, the tiny tilt of her head as she inspected every move. It was more than a little unnerving, especially when she wasn't saying anything at all.

Miss Grimes was from Texas – Sally Ann had heard that she had even been a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader for a few seasons – and everyone knew how seriously Texans took cheering. As a coach, she ran the squad with focus and iron-handed discipline, and even though the girls joked about her behind her back, they were all a little terrified of her.

So it was with a sinking feeling in the bottom of her stomach that Sally Ann listened to Miss Grimes instruct the squad – in her quiet, steely tone – to wrap up practice and find a seat on the floor of the gym.

"Ladies," she finally said, after pacing in front of them for a few moments, "I really don't know what to say."

Sally Ann quickly glanced over at Gwen, sitting right nearby, and saw the same look of frozen-eyed dread that she knew had to be written all over her own face.

"It's almost as if in the last week and a half we've been practicing, y'all have gotten _worse_ ," Miss Grimes continued. "When I look at y'all, all I see are sloppy arms and imprecise jumps, handsprings that barely get off the ground. All I see are a group of girls who forget to smile, who look about as _cheerful_ as they would sitting in the dentist's office."

She stopped and faced them, her hands on her hips.

"What I _don't_ see is a squad ready to perform in front of an actual audience, as if they might actually be capable of inspiring some spirit. And what I _definitely_ don't see is a squad who should even be _thinking_ about regionals in November, not if it doesn't want to get laughed out of the competition."

As she looked at them, the gym was deathly silent, as if they all had forgotten how to breathe.

"If y'all are serious about making this squad into something more than just a little somersault club, then y'all need to get your pretty heads out of your derrieres _and get to work_. Ledda" – she pointed at the blonde senior, sitting in front – "as captain, your responsibility is to help lead this team and get it into shape. You're not their big sister or their friend, you're their captain." She paused, her gaze widening out over the whole squad. "As for everyone else, that means we're going to practice these routines until y'all can do them perfectly in your sleep. That means we're gonna be here working _every_ _afternoon_ until Friday's game. We're gonna practice on weekends, starting this Saturday. Be here at eight, and we'll be done once y'all have absolutely nailed each part of the routine. Y'all hear me?"

"Yes, ma'am," they all echoed.

"Good," she said. "Go grab your stuff and head on home."

Sally Ann stood up from the hardwood floor, feeling thoroughly demoralized. Even worse, though, was that all the work she had done planning her schedule had been totally upended – and now she was going to have to figure out what to do about Saturday.

"Well, that sucked," Gwen muttered.

"Yeah," Sally Ann replied.

Because it really did suck. She had no idea how she was going to do it, because she couldn't be in two places at the same time, and if Miss Grimes was going to essentially double the number of practices, it was going to make it incredibly hard – if not impossible – to keep her grades up and hold on to her job. And so much, she knew, was dependent on both. She let out a small sigh, even as the tension in the pit of her stomach refused to dissipate. She didn't know what to do, and what made it even worse was that there was no one she could tell, no one who – if only for a second – she could share her burden with.


	3. Chapter 3

"Is that debit or credit?" Sally Ann asked the middle-aged man standing across the counter from her. Her feet were starting to hurt and she would have given just about anything to drop the polite half-smile that had been plastered onto her face for the past two hours. "If it's debit, you're going to want to enter your PIN number in just a second."

As the customer punched in the code, she started thinking about what she needed to do once she got home: there was homework for math and Spanish, and she had a test in chemistry next week that she needed to start studying for. All that might take her a couple of hours tonight, but she needed tomorrow free to work on her English essay – something about symbolism and nature in _The Scarlet Letter_ , a book so mind-numbing she frequently felt like flinging it against the wall – and at some point, of course, she needed to clean the apartment and do all the laundry.

That was the thing about her to-do list: there was always something on it, and even though she felt so busy all the time, the list itself never seemed to get any shorter.

It had been nearly three weeks since school had started, nearly three weeks of trying negotiate the demands of school and her job – and of course the additional cheer practices that Miss Grimes had mandated back on the first day. Some days – mostly the ones where she woke up after only getting a few hours' sleep – it felt like she had been doing this for months rather than weeks.

The first few days had been the hardest, as she adjusted to the demands of her schedule. The big hurdle, of course, had been what to do about that first Saturday practice; after days of trying to figure out a half-way decent solution, she finally just decided to call the store that morning and claim that she had gotten a bad case of food poisoning. Luckily, her manager, Mr. Fults, didn't ask too many questions, and he was also nice enough to let her change around her hours so she could work later in the evenings.

That's how she had ended up here, at eight o'clock on a Saturday night, even though all her friends had left practice together and gone to watch movies over at Sharon's house, where they would probably order pizza and stay up half the night. Sally Ann had made her excuses – almost always, her explanation involved her brother and some demand he had made of her – and felt a tug of disappointment that her friends didn't seem too upset that she wouldn't be coming. Even though they still had class together – and endless hours of practice – she could feel some distance growing between them. No one had said anything, of course, but she could sense it, just from the way they had started talking and acting around her. Maybe it was all the other responsibilities she had, pulling her in a million different directions, maybe it was weight of the secret itself, but whatever the cause, it was pushing a small but perceptible wedge between them.

But that wasn't something she really liked thinking about. In a way, it was easier to make mental to-do lists, easier to just focus on the thing right in front of her, rather than spend any real time thinking about the fact that she was standing here behind a counter, wearing a blue vest and a nametag, as so much of her life seemed to go on without her, and some days she felt like she could barely keep afloat.

She sighed softly, turning her attention to the next customer in line.

Two young men came up to the counter: they were in their early twenties, she guessed, one with long brown hair that fell past his shoulders, the other with darker hair, nearly black, and a wispy beard and mustache. Their purchase, she noted as she watched it inch forward on the conveyor belt, consisted entirely of three cases of Coors.

"And a bag of ice," the long-haired one said to her.

"Sure," she answered, as she quickly scanned the bar codes. "Just need to see some ID."

He fished his wallet out of his back pocket and handed her his license. Twenty three in February, she calculated, and then her eyes flashed down to the name near the bottom of the card. _Foster Farrell VII_.

Sally Ann glanced up quickly at his face, wondering for a second if he was related to Hasil. It wasn't so common a last name, so he could be a cousin, she reasoned, maybe second or third, or somehow a few steps removed. She was so caught up in trying to figure out what their relationship might be that she didn't even notice who was walking towards the register until he was right there.

"Here, look, I got your pretzels, okay?"

She turned to the right to see a jumbo-sized bag of the snack in question being dropped onto the conveyor belt, and then, as she shifted her gaze higher, a familiar set of blue-gray eyes, open wide in surprise.

For a moment, they simply looked at each other, oblivious to everything else. He was wearing two t-shirts, black short-sleeved on top of white long-sleeved, the fraying edges of the cuffs pushed back towards his elbows, partially revealing a set of spindly tattoos tracing down his forearms. She had never seen them before; in class, he had always pulled the sleeves of his hoodie down towards his wrists.

Of course, she hadn't actually seen that much of him in the last three weeks – they had only done two labs together, and even then hadn't talked about much of anything beyond the work they were supposed to be doing. It still felt the same, being around him, that sensation of her heart pressing tightly against her ribcage, but she tried her best to ignore it when they were working on a lab. It was harder to ignore now.

"Hi," he said quietly.

"Hey," she replied, more than a little surprised herself to see him here, of all places.

And then everything else shifted back into place: she was still standing behind the counter, with the two young men across from her – presumably his relatives – clearly waiting for her to finish scanning their purchase. They quickly paid in cash, and if they had noticed a spark of recognition between Hasil and the girl working the register, they said nothing. Instead, they grabbed their beer and the bag of pretzels and made their way up towards the entrance of the store, where the freezer full of ice bags was located.

But rather than follow them – as she had expected – Hasil continued to stand there, looking at her as if he still couldn't quite make sense of what he was seeing. As if, maybe, some part of him didn't want to leave just yet.

"I didn't know you worked here," he murmured.

"Well, uh, I only just started… in the summer," she said, lightly shrugging her shoulders. "It's just part-time… obviously…"

The words fell awkwardly from her mouth; she didn't understand how she always seemed to feel so overly talkative around him. So she let it get quiet for a moment, let the silence between them stretch out a little longer. But that was a mistake, she quickly realized. Without the distraction of words – or some task like a chemistry lab to complete – there was nothing else to look at aside from him, and there was no way to ignore that he was looking right at her.

It was too much – she just couldn't keep standing there, not with the warmth pulling at her ribs and burrowing down deep past her stomach.

"Those your relatives?" she finally asked, jutting her head at the two young men near the freezer.

He glanced back towards them, and then turned, his gaze softly meeting hers again. "That's Foster and Brayden, my cousins."

"Looks like they're having a party," she said, offering him a tiny smile. She couldn't help but notice the way his tousled hair curled over his forehead and the tops of his ears, and for half a second wondered if it was as soft as it looked. He hadn't shaved for a few days, she realized, a light dusting of fuzz clearly visible along his upper lip and the edge of his chin.

"Yeah, well… it's just for a family thing we're having at my house." And then it was his turn to nonchalantly shrug, as if there was nothing much else to say on the matter.

"Oh," she said, half-hoping that she could get him to say more. Of course, everyone knew all the rumors about what happened where the Farrells lived and what they did, but some small part of her wanted to know the truth about what it was like, even if she didn't feel quite right asking directly.

Instead of elaborating, though, he tilted his head slightly, his eyes open and full of curiosity.

"Your hair… it's different," he said. "How'd you get it to do that?"

Instinctually, she reached her fingers up to the edge of her hairline, right above her ear. She had momentarily forgotten about her hair: normally, for school, she straightened it, sometimes putting in soft curls for special occasions like game days. For work, though, she liked to keep it up and protected, knowing that it made her look a little bit older, a little less like a teenager that people could easily order around. Some days she rolled it or coiled it into simple twists, but today she had put it into braids that wrapped like a halo around the crown of her head.

She couldn't really imagine that he had never seen a girl braid her hair on top of her head, but the way he was looking at her – like she was shining full of light – she would have almost believed him if he said he hadn't. Her cheeks were growing warm, rounding as she began to smile. Feeling more and more self-conscious, she bit her lips together, wanting to look away but somehow entirely unable to.

She was trying to think about what to say to him when a sharp yell echoed from the store entrance.

"Hasil, c'mon!"

His cousins where standing by the entrance, she saw, a bag of ice now loaded onto Foster's shoulder. They looked impatient, like they couldn't wait to leave.

"Yeah, I gotta…" he started, nodding in the direction of the entrance as a tiny half-grin edged along the side of his mouth. "I'll see ya…"

And like that, he was gone, quickly rejoining his cousins, the three of them disappearing out into the darkness of the parking lot.

She took a deep breath, trying to clear her thoughts and make a little more sense of what had just happened. But it hadn't been _that_ strange, had it? Hasil Farrell was just a guy she knew from school and while they had ended up talking for a little bit, they would just go back to school on Monday and nothing would have changed. He would still be who he was, with all his skater friends, and she would still be who she was, with hers – everything would still be the same.

And wouldn't it actually be a great story to tell her friends, about how she saw him and his strange and mysterious older cousins buying multiple cases of beer on a Saturday night?

It hit her suddenly. She could never say a word about what she saw, or why she was there, because then it would all come out – the part-time job, the money issues, all the lies she had told about where she was going. Then came an even worse realization: _he_ was the one who had seen _her_ , not the other way around. How hard would it be, really, for him to tell one or two of his friends that he had seen her there, working the evening shift, nametag pinned to her vest? And how hard would it be for those friends to tell their friends, and for the damn whole school to know by Monday morning?

She could feel her stomach turning into a solid, frozen mass, all the traces of warmth she had felt before having completely vanished. There was no way he wouldn't say something to somebody. Soon enough everyone would know all her secrets, all the things she had been trying so desperately to hide. And of course none of that changed the fact that she still had two more hours of work on her shift, and hours of school work to do when she got home – and even more tomorrow. The to-do list didn't care that by this time on Monday, the whole structure of her social life – one she had carefully cultivated and maintained – could essentially be over.


	4. Chapter 4

She spent all of Sunday waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Somehow, though, even with her stomach tying itself into solid little knots all day, she managed to get through her chores at home and complete her English paper. It was one-thirty in the morning by the time she did the final edits – she had nodded off twice while she was writing or she would have finished earlier – and before climbing into bed she quickly checked her phone to see if any of her friends had heard the news about her yet. There wasn't anything, really, just a long group text around dinnertime that involved half the members of the cheer squad bitching about Miss Grimes. And a few hours later, Gwen had messaged her on Snapchat with a photo of her unopened chemistry book captioned "kill me now." But there was no indication that anyone knew anything about where Sally Ann had been on Saturday night.

Even after she got to school on Monday, she kept waiting, expecting something to happen. It didn't make any sense: how could he not have told anyone about seeing her? A varsity cheerleader and one of the most popular girls in her grade working the register and checking IDs at a big box store? It was ready-made gossip, guaranteed to entertain the slacker freaks that he hung out with.

But all through her morning classes, through lunch and into the afternoon, it finally dawned on her that he might not have said a thing, that everything in her world was just as it had been before he walked up to her at the counter two days ago.

As she walked through the door of her chemistry class, she took a deep breath to steady herself, silently wishing that it might be true.

She found her normal seat behind Gwen, who immediately swiveled around in her seat to face her.

"So what happened to you last night?"

"English paper," Sally Ann replied quickly. "I turned off my phone." She nodded towards Gwen's chemistry book, sitting on her desk. "How's the studying going?"

"Don't ask," Gwen sighed, rolling her eyes a little. "I may need to borrow your class notes from last week, though. Mine are pretty crappy."

"Yeah, no problem."

The bell rang and Mr. Houghton made his way to the front of the room, his hands high up in the air as he tried to get their attention.

"Alright, everybody, settle down… Now, just a reminder, in case you somehow forgot, we've got a test coming up on Wednesday covering the first three chapters of the book. We'll do some review tomorrow, so come ready with questions. But today we're going to do one last lab, focusing on redox reactions… So let's head off to the lab tables" – he raised his voice as the room began to buzz with the sound of everyone shuffling out of their desks – "and you'll find you find the procedures there along with all your equipment."

Sally Ann grabbed her pen and notebook, trying her best to quiet the fluttering sensations in her chest as she walked over to their assigned spot at the second lab table. She didn't look up at Hasil's face as he approached her or even as he picked up the printed lab instructions and gave them a cursory glance. All she could do was focus on the long, pale lines of his fingers as they curled around the paper, at the empty space where the last two digits of his left hand should have been.

She didn't really know what to say to him, how to even begin.

"You want to see?" he asked, handing her the sheet of paper.

"Sure, okay," she said, taking another steadying breath.

It was easy to busy herself in the lab instructions for a little while, until she realized she was just staring at the paper without actually reading anything. And she _knew_ she had to ask him; she couldn't go another day feeling like this.

"So, um…" she said tentatively, her eyes quickly flashing up to meet his, "did you say anything to anyone about seeing me at the store the other night?"

His eyebrows narrowed slightly. "No…"

"Oh," she replied softly. She could feel the coil of tension begin to unwind itself from her spine. "So could you _not_ … say anything… to anyone?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "Who would I tell?" But then he glanced down at her again, his look in his eyes growing sharper, more serious, as if he only now understood what she was asking. "But I won't… tell anyone," he added. "I wouldn't…"

His voice trailed off, leaving only silence between them, a thick, palpable quiet that surrounded them even in the middle of a crowded classroom, dozens of other students busily at work.

"Okay," she said, nodding a little. The strange thing was that she actually believed him. She couldn't have said why – in fact, there was no reason why she should trust him at all – but she did. If her secret did come out somehow, it wouldn't be because of him. And he hadn't even asked her why, she realized; he had just agreed to her request without demanding any kind of explanation. "Thanks…" she added.

She was about to suggest that they turn their attention back to the lab when she heard Mr. Houghton's voice cut above the cloud of classroom noise.

"Don't forget, folks, redox reactions are definitely going to come up on Wednesday, so this is a good opportunity to practice balancing your half-reaction equations…"

She nodded a little to herself; she had already gone over redox reactions on Saturday night after she got home from work, outlining the material based on her class notes and making herself a set of flashcards. Her plan was to do a little more studying this afternoon and then get together with Gwen and Sharon for a lunch-time cram session on the day of the test.

She dropped the lab instructions onto the table and reflexively pressed her palms against the front of her jeans, wanting somewhere to put her hands, a place to direct all her nervous energy.

"So have you started studying yet?" she asked casually, feeling the need to shift topics and find something easier to talk about. Hearing no response, she glanced back, only to be met with a half-blank stare.

He probably hadn't done anything at all, she realized, and then she wondered if he had even opened up the textbook in the last three weeks. It was kind of depressing, really, as she thought about it. He was great at the labs, and he clearly understood the concepts when they were laid out for him in ways that he could measure and observe. But if he hadn't been reading - or taking any notes in class - the test on Wednesday was going to be a complete disaster. She didn't understand why the thought of that made her feel so sad, or why she suddenly felt the urge to find a way to help him.

"Um, if you want," she started, not really knowing what she was saying even as the words continued to flow from her mouth, "we could go over some of it together..." She stopped, giving him an inquiring little glance. "I mean, I was going to study this afternoon anyway, so it wouldn't be that big a deal…"

He looked at her for a moment, his dark eyebrows knitting together in partial confusion, and she started to wonder if he had understood what she had said.

"Yeah, that sounds good," he finally replied, his expression shifting as his gaze turned stronger, warmer. Even in the harsh florescent lighting of the classroom, his eyes were so big and bright, deep ocean pools of blue and gray that she could feel herself drowning in. "Um, so... where'd you want to meet?" he asked.

She tried to pull back into her thoughts enough to fully consider his question. Now that she had offered to study with him, she realized that there weren't actually that many good locations for them to work. Her apartment was out the question, not with the possibility of her brother being around, and she couldn't even imagine going over to Hasil's house, although she guessed that it was probably just as unwelcoming to outsiders as hers would be. There was always the library, but it would be full of other students, and she knew that things would get bad for her – among her circle of friends at least – if the two of them were seen working together. And then it suddenly came to her, the one spot no one would ever think to look for them.

"I know a place that we can go," she said, feeling the corners of her mouth curling into a tiny smile. "Meet me by my car after school gets out, okay?"

He nodded and then they turned their attention back to the lab, but even so Sally Ann felt a tingling pull of anticipation that continued for the rest of the period, through her history class, and even as she worked on her own in the library up until the final bell rang. Her intention had been to finish up all her other homework before school finished, just so that she would have the rest of the afternoon free for chemistry. That turned out to be trickier than she had anticipated, though, mostly because she kept losing her focus every five minutes, her mind somehow drifting back to the way their gazes had occasionally caught as they were working on the lab.

And then she saw him there, standing a few feet away from her beat-up Honda Civic, as she made her way towards the back reaches of the parking lot. She had been running late this morning – staying up late the night before had led to multiple hits of the snooze button – and had been forced to park pretty far away from the building. But now she could breathe a tiny sigh of relief, knowing that nobody she really knew would see him there, waiting for her.

"Hey," she murmured as she unlocked the doors and threw her bag in the backseat.

He opened the passenger door and took a seat next to her, and she tried to ignore how different it felt with him now, in a smaller, enclosed space. Turning the ignition, she took one last glance out the window, just to see if anyone had spotted them, and then promptly hit the gas.

It wasn't that far to their destination – just a ten-minute drive – and as they were pulling up to the curb she could see Hasil staring in confusion at the for-sale sign on the front lawn.

"Wait, who lives here?"

"No one," she said. "It's been empty all summer. The owners must've moved away or something."

She and Gwen had found the house in May, back when there had been plenty of time for lazy afternoons with her friends, back when they had driven around for hours and had nowhere else they had to be. They had noticed the sign, the way the house was always dark at night, and at one point they had stopped and taken a look around. It was Gwen who had realized that one of the living room windows was unlocked, and that it wouldn't be too hard to get inside. There had been vague plans for having a party there in the fall, now that they were going to be juniors and part of the varsity squad, but then Sally Ann had gotten her job and school had started again, and there never seemed to be a good time. Gwen had probably forgotten all about it.

Sally Ann grabbed her backpack and took him around the side of the house, pushing the window open and stepping inside. As he followed after her, she glanced around: the rooms were empty of furniture, and all that was left were a few crumpled pieces of newspaper and some evenly-spaced indentations in the off-white carpet. The house was full of windows, though, warm afternoon light bathing everything in gold.

It was only as she was turning around to face him that she realized how truly alone they were. They had been alone in her car, of course, but that was different: there were other drivers and pedestrians, a whole world going past them through the windows. But here, it was just the two of them. If there were any place to abduct her and cut her into little pieces, she thought as she remembered Gwen's comment in the locker room, this would be it. But that was so ridiculous as to almost be funny; if he hadn't even thought to spread her secrets all over school, dismemberment probably wasn't next on his list.

He had his hands in the pockets of his hoodie, standing half-way in a patch of sunlight, the soft curls of his hair catching in the beams, a thousand shades of chestnut and auburn.

She took a deep breath and bit the edge of her bottom lip, warmth slowly rising up into her throat. It made no sense, the way she felt when she was around him, and she knew it had to stop – for her sake, for his, and in particular for the sake of the test she had fully decided he was going to pass. She was just helping him out with chemistry; there was nothing more to it than that.

So she dropped her backpack onto the carpet and sat down, taking just one quick glance up at him as she started taking out her textbook and notes.

"Should we get started?" she asked.


	5. Chapter 5

"Okay… so name the five basic types of chemical reactions," she said, glancing down for a quick second at the index card in the palm of her hand. She knew what they were, but it didn't hurt to look, just in case.

"Exchange, acid-base, redox, cleavage, and…" – Hasil paused, lines furrowing across his forehead – "…condensation."

Her lips curled into a tiny smile and she nodded. "Redox is short for…?"

"Oxidation-reduction."

"Describe what happens during a redox reaction…"

"Uh, two atoms or molecules react, and that changes their oxidation states. One molecule gets oxidized and the other gets reduced. The one that's oxidized, it… it…" He sighed and shook his head. "Something happens with the electrons. I don't remember… Sorry…"

"No, no, you remember this, I promise." Sally Ann set the index card down on the carpet and leaned forward a little. There had to be some way, she thought, to connect the theoretical concepts to the tangible reality of what he already knew. "So think about the lab today…" she offered. "We put zinc in the copper sulfate solution and what happened?"

"Copper formed in the solution. And zinc sulfate."

"Okay, why?"

"Um, in the original solution, the copper was an ion, so it was positively charged…" His face began to brighten as the words tumbled from his mouth. "It took electrons from the zinc, so the zinc became an ion and then combined to form zinc sulfate."

"The zinc lost electrons, became positively charged, so it…?"

"Oxidized…?" he offered hesitantly.

She grinned. "And the copper gained electrons, became neutral, so it…?"

"Reduced."

"Exactly," she said, a hint of triumph in her voice. But she didn't want to stop now, not when he was doing so well. "And you remember the two half-reactions from our results?"

Now it was his turn to grin, although a little more sheepishly. "Zinc turns into a zinc two ion plus two electrons, and the copper two ion plus two electrons turns into copper."

"See? You _know_ this!"

She glanced over at him, his soft gaze catching hers, and for a second she found it slightly difficult to breathe. It was harder than she had anticipated, looking away, but she finally did, as she searched for something to dispel the weight of the silence.

"But here…" She grabbed the card by her feet, adding it back into the rest of her pile, and then she reached out the stack towards him. "You should borrow these. It'll probably be good to keep quizzing yourself."

"Don't you need them?" he asked, cautiously taking the cards from her outstretched hand.

"I mean, you can give them back to me tomorrow, if you want…" she said, shrugging slightly. "But I think I'm okay without them now."

It was true: she felt more than prepared for Wednesday. Studying on her own had been fine, but she was surprised how helpful it had been to go over everything with him. He didn't have any notes from class – much less a study guide or flash cards – so she had ended up teaching a lot of the material to him, which, she realized, had actually helped her understand it even better. And he was surprisingly easy to work with, although based on how well their partnership at the lab table was going maybe it shouldn't have been so remarkable. But unlike Gwen and Sharon, who would have quickly gotten distracted by a text or something else on their phones, Hasil stayed focused on the task at hand and never seemed to get too discouraged or stressed. In a way – although it didn't make much sense – he almost seemed _happy_ , sitting there on the carpet with her, going over acids and bases, memorizing the names of chemical compounds. And she couldn't believe that he was talking as much as he was, even if it was just about chemistry. He probably had said more to her this afternoon than in all their other conversations combined.

She gazed over towards the windows; the daylight was slowly fading, leaving only a burnished glow that cast hazily across the room. She had no idea what time it was, but it had to be at least five or six o'clock, late enough that she needed to think about getting home. Quickly fishing her phone from her backpack, she noticed that there was a text from James, asking about dinner and what she was planning on making. The problem was that she had no idea – she hadn't even thought about it – so she texted back "its a surprise!" and then shoved her phone in the pocket of her jeans.

"Sorry…" she said, offering a small, apologetic smile. "My brother."

He tilted his head a little as he looked back at her. "Yeah…" His voice was quiet, somehow a little lower and deeper, like there were words held somewhere in his throat that couldn't quite escape.

"Anyway…" she said, playfully stretching out the word as she glanced around the room, "I should probably get home… I need to start making dinner."

"You make dinner for your family?"

"Well…" she admitted, "it's just for me and my brother."

"What about your parents?" he asked, his expression equal parts confusion and curiosity.

For a moment, she didn't know what to say. She didn't talk that much about her parents – in fact, she never really talked about them – and while her close friends were aware of the situation, or at least the broad outlines of it, there were some details that she hadn't really shared with anyone. It wasn't that she was ashamed of it, but it still somehow seemed private, something that belonged to her and no one else. At this moment, though, her first instinct was to lie – say they were out of town, or something like that – until then it dawned on her that she didn't really _want_ to lie to him. And she could tell him the truth, she realized. If today had shown her anything, it was that he was a person who she might be able to trust with her secrets.

"They're not really around," she said, gently worrying her bottom lip with her teeth. "I never knew my dad… and my mom left us when I was ten. So, yeah, it's just the two of us."

He nodded, his gaze open, without the slightest trace of judgment. "And it's okay, living with him?"

She froze; she hadn't expected him to ask her that, mostly because no one ever had. It wasn't even something she let herself think about, not really. There were those moments, of course, of solitary half-consciousness as she drifted off to sleep, where she allowed herself to imagine, if only for a little while, a life unburdened by the needs and expectations of her brother. In the soft reverie of her dreams, no one yelled at her about a dirty dish left in the sink or slammed doors and sulked after their NBA team lost by double digits. There, in that quiet place, she imagined family dinners on Sundays, a house with walls covered in photos of their vacations, her parents coming to watch her cheer at games, waving to her from the stands.

"Yeah, it's fine," she murmured, the words quick and half-clipped. She wasn't really in the mood to answer any more questions, particularly not ones about her family.

Sally Ann exhaled softly and uncrossed her legs, stretching them out in front of her. The room was silent again, tiny dust motes floating lazily in the light. Her gaze drifted down and caught on the frayed, stained cuffs of his jeans, the worn-down tread on the bottom of his Vans. It was strange to think about how they had ended up here in this place, the two of them, when everything about them seemed so different, when the worlds they inhabited were so far apart.

"Can I ask you something?" she said, lifting her gaze up to meet his. "Were you _actually_ planning on studying before I asked you about it?"

The corner of his mouth ticked up as he ran his fingers through his hair. He didn't say anything, but from the knowing look in his eyes, it was clear what the answer was.

"So how do you expect to pass if you don't study?" she asked lightheartedly, trying her best to keep any hint of accusation from her voice. At this point, she was more curious than anything else.

"I mean…" he muttered, shaking his head a little as he offered her a tiny, bashful smile. He leaned back, golden light catching along his shoulder and arm, against the side of his face. "I don't know."

"Then why do you come to school at all?"

He shrugged. "It's school…" he said, as if that was its own explanation.

"Won't your parents be mad if you flunk out?" She hadn't ever considered the idea that he had parents, but of course he had to, probably living with him and all his relatives in that place off the highway.

His gaze slowly shifted, focusing in on some distant, unseen object beyond where she was. "I don't…" He paused, letting out a rough breath. "My parents died, when I was little."

Her eyes widened a little: she hadn't expected that either. Who could have, honestly? Who would have ever guessed – seeing him roam through the hallways with his slacker friends, watching all of them mess around with their skate tricks and their pot smoking like they wanted to give the whole world the middle finger – that he carried something like that? Because she knew what that was like, how heavy it was.

"So who raised you?" she asked softly.

"Everybody… aunts, uncles, all my cousins."

"But no mom and dad?"

He shook his head, a small, almost imperceptible movement, and she noticed how still the rest of his body was. He couldn't possibly be worried about her reaction, could he? Had he just offered her a secret of his own, something he hadn't been able to entrust to anyone else? There was no way she could know, of course, but that didn't stop her heart from suddenly feeling several sizes too big for her chest.

"And it's okay, living with them?" she asked, repeating his earlier question to her, as a shy smile began to form on her lips.

"Yeah…" he shrugged. "But I've been kinda taking care of myself for a while now. I mean, I live with them, but let's just say no one really cares how I'm doing in chemistry."

"That's not true…" she quickly countered.

He raised his eyebrows in amused disbelief, as if challenging her to explain.

"I mean, _I_ care…" she responded, only to realize how that might have sounded to him. "And _you_ should care…" she quickly added, feeling more and more awkward as she continued to speak. "I'm just saying, it'd be a pain to get stuck with a new lab partner."

"Right," he said, warmth slowly seeping into his gaze. "I guess we'll see on Wednesday, huh?"

"Yeah…" She glanced away, looking down at the carpet, at the open textbook and notes scattered across it. "Anyway, we should probably get going, before it gets too late…"

It didn't take very long to pack everything up and make their way back outside. The western horizon was cascading into shades of pink and purple as she walked with him over to her car, one hand on the side of her backpack while she searched in the front pocket for her keys.

"I can give you a ride home if you want…" she said, unlocking the driver's door.

"Uh, yeah, okay…" he said, and then paused in hesitation. "It's just…"

"What?"

He shook his head. "Nothing," he said, climbing into the passenger's seat.

The two of them were quiet again as they drove through residential neighborhoods, and then finally onto the highway that snaked across the west side of town. She had a rough idea of where she was going, although like almost everybody else in town she had never actually been to where the Farrells lived. He would probably just let her know when she needed to turn, she reasoned, and so she wasn't surprised when he finally pointed to an unpaved road about fifty yards away, marked only by a metal mailbox and a No Trespassing sign.

"So, uh, you can just let me out up at the turn-out…"

"You don't want me to drop you off at your house?" she asked as she slowed down and stopped on the shoulder of the road.

"No, I can walk from here…" he replied quickly. As he turned to unbuckle his seat belt, he quickly glanced up to meet her gaze. "I mean, you really shouldn't… go onto the property…"

"Why?" Was there something out there he didn't want her to see? Or did he not want his family to see her?

"It's just not a good idea, okay?" He opened the car door and stepped out, but rather than shutting it closed, he braced his hands against the frame and leaned down to look at her.

"Uh, okay…" she said, realizing she wasn't going to get more out of him than that. "So I guess I'll see you later, then."

"Yeah…" He flashed a tiny, sweet smile at her, as if just now recalling the last few hours they had spent together. "And thanks, for all your help today…"

"Yeah, no problem…"

He shut the door and then turned towards the road, slowly disappearing into the growing dusk. She watched him for a while, until she couldn't see him anymore, each second that went by making her wonder more and more about the place where he lived and the people he lived with. It was a mystery: how could there be so many people around, but no one to really care that much about how he was doing – in school, at least? And why would the idea of her going on the property – just to drop him off – be all that worrisome?

Brushing the questions from her mind, Sally Ann sighed and flipped on her headlights, the beams illuminating the gravel as she slowly eased back onto the highway.


End file.
